


Gray... son?

by Qais



Series: Where Human Beings Grow Human Souls [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, I'm sorry if this spoils you, but i had to, mostly happy feels, uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 08:49:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17403809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qais/pseuds/Qais
Summary: He doesn't remember. And then he does.He goes home.





	Gray... son?

It comes in snippets, and the figure in blue and black gives him a twinge in his stomach that he doesn’t recognize. The fight is important, and Ra’s must be obeyed and the child needs to be protected but the twinge grows stronger as he hears that voice, and watches the contortion of limbs. Unbidden, in the moments of silence after the fight, he remembers - a word. 

“Gray- son?” Ra’s’ reaction tells him that this is important. A fragment of his past life come back to him. As they head inside he looks back, watching the ship blink into nothingness far in the night sky. Another twinge, a flash of black and grey and a deep voice. He shakes his head and follows Ra’s. 

\---

A week later and he has not said another word. Ra’s is irritated, sure that he has remembered nothing more. Talia is hopeful still, needling him as she did when he had first awoken from the pit, with questions worded carefully to not be suggestive while still feeding curiosity. He says nothing, and stares at the quiet eyes of the child in her arms. A twinge. He is familiar to him, not through his mother’s eyes, or his grandfather’s complexion. There is something else. 

In the days following the fight he has been feeling the twinges with far more frequency. He has remembered a face, one which he thinks belongs to the man in black and blue who he’d fought with. He remembers blue eyes too, with a wearier face that he can’t quite picture. Frustrated he stares harder at the child, who gurgles happily at the attention. 

\---

He remembers his father suddenly. Talia is standing and speaking to Ra’s, and he is holding the child in his own arms, looking intently down at the green eyes. He drags gloved fingers lightly over the brow bone of the child and the force of the memory that hits him threatens to drag him under. The blue eyes have a face now, and the name comes with difficulty, in pieces. 

“Br-” He stops himself before completing it out loud, cutting his eyes sharply towards the al Ghuls, who are paying him no mind. The twinges in his chest tell him not to trust them, to play his cards close to his chest. He doesn’t understand why, but has no trouble remembering the brutality that he’d faced after his surfacing from the pit. 

It is not difficult to listen to his memories. 

\---

He is leaving. He has remembered enough, though not nearly an entire life. He knows his father’s name. He knows his brother’s name. His grandfather’s. He finds it curious that his own name has yet to come to him. 

He doesn’t need it anyway. He is leaving. The child though- the child cannot be left here, but he cannot take the child with him. He is safer with his mother, at least until he has grown and the brutality of his training begins. He will return before then, if he survives his departure. 

\--- 

Gotham is an interesting city. It exists almost as a shade in his mind, not quite remembered, but familiar in all its filth and decay. He has arrived and does not quite know where to go. The apartment that his feet had initially led him to was clearly not what he was looking for. 

He turned and walked a ways away from the city. He prayed on the faces and names that he remembered that he was going the right away.

\--- 

The front door was ornate, and he remembered it. In flashes so heavy that it was clear that he had seen this door many many times before- before. He hesitated momentarily and then grit his teeth. A world over, with nothing but shades and ghosts of memories guiding him, he rang the doorbell. 

A pause, and then.

“Good evening, what can I-” the pause is sharp, punctuated by a great inhalation and no exhalation. He knows this face. 

“Al- fie?” HIs voice is hoarse, he has not spoken in days, but the man’s eyes widen and fill alarmingly with tears. 

“Master Jason?” The voice is quite a bit more hushed, but he- Jason, almost doesn’t realize it. HIs head is a cacophony of sounds and memories and it feels like he cycles through 15 years of life in an instant. He has a moment of reprieve where he blinks and finds himself on the ground, still in the doorway to the manor. The reprieve is cut-off by vivid technicolor memories of his death. 

Jason faints.

\--- 

“The DNA checks out, Ra’s’ story checks out, there isn’t a body in the grave, it’s him.”  
\---

“What- how long- I should have looked for him- my son-”

\---

“Hey Littlewing, hope you wake up soon, you missed out on tons of TV, probably even more books-”

\---

Jason wakes slowly, and he blinks his eyes open to find himself in what he knows isn’t his room but still looks familiar. A glance at the window tells him he’s in Bruce’s (god, Bruce) room. As he wiggles a bit, he feels pressure on his arm and looks over, expecting to see Dick, or Alfred, and finds Bruce himself. 

Jason barely stops himself from startling, badly. Bruce’s, his dad’s, face is older than Jason remembers but then, it would be. Jason knows that it’s been 5 years, knows he’s been alive for only 1 of them, and knows that at least half of the lines in Bruce’s face probably date back to Jason’s own... death. He starts to tear up and sniffs, embarrassed, before realizing that he’s quite literally been dead and probably has the right.

“Bruce?” He whispers, and when the man doesn’t so much as twitch, Jason squeezes the hand holding his and tries again, a little louder. “Dad?”

He’s up like a shot, a little wild eyed, looking even more rough now that his bloodshot eyes are visible. Bruce pauses, eyes wide, looking at Jason like he’s seen- well. His hands are hovering in front of him, not touching Jason, as if afraid that he isn’t real.

“Dad?” And tears spill down Jason’s cheeks as flashes of his death hit him again. He hadn’t been able to speak or open his eyes when Bruce had reached him in that fiery wreck of the warehouse. But Jason had been awake, and his last memory of Bruce was his voice screaming Jason’s name as he rocked him in his arms. Bruce had promised everything if only his son stayed alive and Jason had passed into darkness with his father’s sobs ringing in his ears. 

“Jay- Jason- Jaylad” and Jason is in Bruce’s arms, both of them clutching each other so viciously that it’s clearly difficult for both of them to breathe. Neither of them loosen their grips.

**Author's Note:**

> Massive spoilers for Young Justice, do not read on if you don't want that.
> 
>  
> 
> Hi hello I just saw Episode 6 of Outsiders and screeched like you would not believe. My heart cannot take another Under the Red Hood storyline, so I preemptively wrote this to soothe my heart. Thanks for reading!


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